A critical assessment of key datasets and approaches with which to determine the resource requirements of future urbanisation

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approaches with which to determine the resource

requirements of future urbanisation

By: Jehane-Prieur du Plessis

Supervisor: Prof. Mark Swilling

March 2016

Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Sustainable Development in the Faculty of

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Declaration

By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.

Jehane-Prieur du Plessis March 2016

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Abstract

It is now generally agreed that in order to avoid the severe threats posed by the “global polycrisis” of climate change, ecological degradation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, food insecurity, income inequality, poverty and over-consumption of raw materials, a pathway of sustainable development must be found in the 21st century. It is also increasingly recognised that urban areas, where the majority of the people on the planet now live, and where the vast majority of energy and materials are consumed, are not only key contributors to the global polycrisis, but also hold the key to a pathway of sustainable development.

However, with around 2.5 billion people projected to be added to the global urban population by 2050, serious questions need to asked about the sustainability of such urban growth. But nearly everyone in the mainstream urbanisation literature seems to assume that urbanisation will continue unabated, and that somehow the resources will be found to make this happen. Nobody is asking, “what are the resource requirements of future urbanisation?” So, the original goal of this study was to try and find an answer to this vital question.

However, in order to assess the resource requirements of global urbanisation to 2050, three key sets of figures would have to be accepted, namely: estimates and projections of urbanisation, population and urban resource consumption. And, in the analysis of the literature surrounding these data themes, fundamental problems were uncovered. So, the focus of the study was then shifted from trying to assess the resource requirements of future urbanisation, to critically analysing the way in which to do so.

As a result, an extensive literature analysis was undertaken over three chapters, focussing on global urbanisation, population growth and resource consumption. The key findings of these literature analyses are that:

 the inaccuracies, inconsistencies and uncertainties that are imbedded within the urbanisation estimates and projections of the UN are of such a nature that their data must be considered too unrealistic and unreliable to form the basis of a comparative study on global urbanisation;

 in the coming decades, economic factors look set to both impede the decline of Africa’s high fertility rates and drive an increase in the fertility rates of low-fertility countries, and, if

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Page | iii this materialises, the combined effect would be a much higher global population by 2050 than any world population perspectives currently projects;

 the domestic material consumption (DMC) indicator that is used in material flows analysis (MFA) studies of cities and countries, does not provide a realistic picture of a city or country’s resource consumption, because it does not account for the upstream raw materials that were required to enable the consumption at the final destination.

An alternative perspective to assessing global urban resource consumption is then proposed, which re-defines “urbanisation” from a global socio-metabolic perspective, and uses the raw material consumption (RMC) indicator and a range of population projections in its method.

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Opsomming

Sedert die 1960s het die wêreldpopulasie meer as verdubbel, wêreldwye roumateriaalverbruik het meer as verdrievoudig, die wêreldwye stadsbevolking het verviervoudig, en die wêreldekonomie het meer as verviervoudig. Hierdie vinnige groei en ontwikkeling het teen ‘n duur omgewingsprys gekom, en in die 21ste-eeu word die menslike beskawing gekonfronteer deur die “globale veelvoud-krisis” van klimaatsverandering, ekologiese degredasie, biodiversiteitsverlies, voedsel- en water-onsekerheid en hulpbronverlies. Dit word nou in die algemeen aanvaar dat indien hierdie bedreigings teen die volhuibaarheid van moderne menslike beskawing oorkom wil word, ‘n pad van volhoubare ontwikkeling gevind moet word. Dit word ook al hoe meer herken dat stads- en dorps-areas, waar die meerderheid van mense op die planet nou woon, en waar die oorweldige meerderheid energie- en material-hulpbronne verbruik word, nie net belangrike sleutelspelers is in die bydra tot die globale veelvoud-krisis nie, maar ook die sleutel dra tot ‘n pad van volhoubare ontwikkeling.

Alhoewel, met die beraming dat 2.4 biljoen mense nog by die wêreldwye stadsbevolking gevoeg gaan word teen 2050, moet ernstige vrae gevra word oor die volhoubaarheid van sulke stadsgroei. Maar, dit kom voor asof amper almal in die hoofstroom literatuur oor verstedeliking net aanvaar dat verstedeliking net kan aanhou, en dat die nodige hulpbronne op een of ander manier gevind sal word om dit te laat gebeur. Niemand vra, “wat is die hulpbronvereistes van toekomstige verstedeliking?” nie. So, die doel van hierdie studie was om ‘n antwoord vir hierdie vraag te probeer kry.

Maar, indien die hulpbronvereistes van wêreld-verstedeliking tot 2050 beraam wil word, dan moet drie data-stelle aanvaar word, naamlik: waarderings en projeksies van verstedeliking, populasie en hulpbronverbruik. En in the analise van die literatuur rondom hierdie drie data-stelle het fundamentele en wyd-rykende probleme na vore gekom. So, die fokus van hierdie studie het toe verander van een wat die hulpbronvereistes van toekomstige verstedeliking wil beraam, tot een wat die maniere om dit te doen krities analiseer.

Om dit te doen was ‘n omvattende analise van die literatuur gedoen, met huidige waarderings en projeksies van verstedeliking, populasie-groei en hulpbronverbruik wat geanaliseer word oor drie hoofstukke. Die belangrikste vindings is dat:

 die onakuuraatheid, inkonsekwentheid en onsekerheid wat gekoppel is aan die verstedeliking waarderings en projeksies van die Verenigde Nasies (VN) is van so ‘n aard

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Page | v dat hulle data as te onrealisties en onvertroubaar beskou moet word vir ‘n studie oor wêreldwye verstedeliking;

 binne die komende dekades gaan ekonomiese faktore heel moontlik terselfdertyd die hoë vrugbaarheidsvlak van Afrika verhoed om vinnig te daal en ook verhogings in die vrugbaarheidsvlak van lande met lae vrugbaarheid veroorsaak – en, as dit verwesenlik word, sal die gekombineerde effek ‘n veel hoër wêreldpopulasie teen 2050 wees as wat enige van die huidige wêreldpopulasie-projeksies voorspel;

 die “domestic material consumption” (DMC) aanwyser wat gebruik word in materiaalvloei-analise (MFA) studies van stede en lande lewer nie ‘n realistiese prenjtie van ‘n stad of land se hulpbronverbruik nie, want dit reken nie die bo-stroom rou-materiale in wat benodig was om die eindverbruik moontlik te maak nie.

‘n Alternatiewe perspektief om die wêreld se stedelike hulpbronverbruik te bereken word voorgestel, wat “verstedeliking” van ‘n sosio-metaboliese perspektief her-definieer, en wat die “raw material consumption” (RMC) aanwyser en ‘n wyer verskeidenheid van populasie projeksies in sy metode gebruik.

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Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the support of a number of people along the way. But my deepest gratitude must first go to my parents, who have supported me in every way they could throughout my studies at the Sustainability Institute (SI).

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Eve Annecke, the director of the SI, and my supervisor, Mark Swilling, for the unique and truly wonderful education I received at the SI (and the Lynedoch Eco-village) – it has been a truly life-changing experience.

It would also have been far more difficult for me to have reached this point without Beatrix Steenkamp, the SI’s administrator. Her kind help, advice, understanding and even moral support throughout my five years at the SI have helped me through many stressful times!

More specifically related to the research product, I must thank my supervisor for introducing me to this topic and including me in the IRP meeting in Rotterdam in 2014 – it was an incredible experience that gave me the necessary insight and passion to carry me through what turned out to be an incredibly challenging research journey. Also, I thank my supervisor for being patient with me, and allowing me the space and time to find my own voice and perspective.

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List of figures

Figure 1.1: Illustrating the difference between natural resources and materials ... 9

Figure 1.2: Global metabolic rate 1900-2005 related to global GDP ... 10

Figure 3.1: The “deterministic backbone” of Randers’s forecasts ... 44

Figure 3.2: Global urban population growth is occurring mainly in towns and small- to medium-sized urban settlements ... 48

Figure 4.1: A linear urban metabolism (a) vs. a more circular urban metabolism (b) ... 67

Figure 4.2: Megacity resource and waste flows as a percentage of world values ... 75

Figure 4.3 Urban resource consumption profiles ... 78

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List of tables

Table 2.1: Comparison between Potts’s analysis and UN estimates for SSA urbanisation ... 25

Table 2.2: SSA countries who have no census data for 20 to 40 years ... 28

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List of acronyms and abbreviations

CAR - Central African Republic

CH4 - methane

CO2 - carbon dioxide

CU - counter-urbanisation

DE - domestic extraction

DMC - domestic material consumption DRC - Democratic Republic of Congo

EF - ecological footprint

EU - European Union

FAO - Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations GDP - gross domestic product

GHG - greenhouse gas

IEA - International Energy Agency

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change MF - material footprint (alternative name for RMC) MFA - material flow analysis

N2O - nitrous oxide

OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development RMC - raw material consumption (alternative name for MF)

SFA - substance flow analysis

SSA - Sub-Saharan Africa

TFR - total fertility rate

TMC - total material consumption TMR - total material requirement

UK - United Kingdom

UM - urban metabolism

UN - United Nations

UNDP - United Nations Development Programme UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme

UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UN-HABITAT - United Nations Human Settlements Programme

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Page | xiii UNPD - United Nations Population Division1

USA - United States of America

WBCSD - World Business Council for Sustainable Development WPP - World Population Prospects (report published by the UNPD) WUP - World Urbanisation Prospects (report published by the UNPD) WWF - World Wildlife Fund for Nature

1_{The full name of this UN body is “United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population}

Division”. This was shortened to “United Nations Population Division” or “UNPD”, as was done by the Population Reference Bureau (2014).

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CHAPTER 1 Introduction

1.1 Background

1.1.1 Our unsustainable development and the global polycrisis

In 1972 the first United Nations (UN) conference on the environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden (UN, 1972), and the “sustainable development” concept was also first introduced to the world by the pioneering work The Limits to Growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972). Since then global efforts towards the environment and to the sustainable development of modern human civilisation have increased markedly. These efforts got off to a slow start, however, so in 1983 the UN established the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (also known as the Brundtland Commission) to formulate new proposals to deal with the important environmental and developmental issues facing the world (WCED, 1987; Swilling, 2004; Wheeler & Beatley, 2004). The result after three years was a document entitled

Our Common Future, which is widely known as the Brundtland Report (Mebratu, 1998; Swilling,

2004). The Brundtland Report famously defined sustainable development as “development that

meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987: 43).

Since the Brundtland Commission was dissolved in 1986, three major UN conferences on the environment and sustainable development have been held2, and in the 21st century the sustainable development concept finally managed to gain a firm foothold in the global policy arena. This establishment of “sustainable development” as a top priority in the global policy arena was confirmed at the 2015 Sustainable Development Summit in New York, when world leaders replaced the UN’s Millennium Development Goals with a new set of global targets, which are now referred to as the “Sustainable Development Goals” (UNEP, 2015).

However, despite this general acceptance by world leaders that our current path of development is unsustainable, and despite all the policies that have been put in place to try and correct this, modern human civilisation is still firmly on a path of unsustainable development. Over the last four decades greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have only increased (IPCC, 2015), food and

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(1) the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (a.k.a. The Rio Earth Summit); (2) the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (a.k.a. The Johannesburg Earth Summit); and (3) the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (a.k.a. Earth Summit 2012, or Rio+20).

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water supplies have only become more threatened (FAO, 2011), ecosystems have only become more degraded (UN, 2005), the rate of biodiversity loss has only sped up (SCBD, 2014), global income distribution has only become more unequal (UNDP, 2013), and global consumption of natural resources has continued to grow exponentially (Behrens, Giljum, Kovanda & Niza, 2007; Krausmann, Gingrich, Eisenmenger, Erb, Haberl & Fischer-Kowalski, 2009; Giljum, Dittrich, Lieber, & Lutter, 2014). These environmental and social costs of our unsustainable development has brought modern human civilisation to a point in the 21st century where we are confronted by what can be termed a “global polycrisis” (Swilling, 2012: 68).

The global polycrisis consists mainly of eight global, interconnected threats. A brief overview of each is necessary here to illustrate their individual contribution to our unsustainable development, as well as to illustrate their complex, systemic and interconnected nature:

 Income inequality: It is estimated that the 85 richest people in the world today have the same level of wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people combined (Fuentes-Nieva & Galasso, 2014: 2). Over the last 30 years, income inequality has risen in almost all high-income countries, and in some cases reached historic highs (OECD, 2015), while also rising by 11 percent in developing countries from 1990 to 2010 (UNDP, 2013: 3). This growing income inequality is unsustainable because it weakens the social fabric of our civilisation. Empirical evidence shows that as income inequality increases within societies, so too does social ills such as crime, violence, infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and physical and mental health problems (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010), while at the same time lowering levels of educational attainment, social mobility and innovation (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010; UNDP, 2014: 36-39). Income inequality also impedes future development by reducing the tax base of countries, which in turn reduces the ability of governments to invest in public goods, services and protection (UNDP, 2014: 21). Such continuous increases in income inequality shows that the global economic system is only making the rich richer and the poor poorer – and this is clearly not a sustainable trend.

 Urban poverty: Nearly a third of the global urban population is estimated to live in slums. Even though the global proportion of urban slum inhabitants have fallen from 39 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2014, the total number of urban slum inhabitants have only increased (UN, 2015: 60). It is estimated that the global urban slum population has increased from around 690 million people in 1990 to around 880 million people by 2014 (UN, 2015: 60). The vast majority of the world’s urban slum population lives in Africa and Asia, which is also the regions where the majority of population growth to 2050 is projected to occur (UNPD, 2015a). Africa has the largest slum population, with nearly 60 percent of their urban population still residing in slums (UN, 2015: 60). The growing urban

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slum population is an unsustainable situation for similar reasons to those of income inequality, but there are also other factors that come into play. Overcrowding, unsafe building structures, occupation of hazardous land and lack of water and sanitation all combine to create highly unsafe living conditions, where disease and disasters can easily have large-scale impacts (UN-HABITAT, 2010). With over 2 billion people expected to be added to the urban populations of Asia and Africa by 2050 (UNPD, 2015c: 1), the global urban slum situation is set to get much worse, unless major steps are taken to reduce global income inequality.

 Climate change: According to the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), current concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) – the three main GHGs – have reached a level that has not been seen for at least 800,000 years, and possibly even for millions of years (IPCC, 2015: 4). It is estimated that human activity has released 555 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere since 1750, with about half of these emissions occurring over the last 40 years (IPCC, 2015: 45). Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributed nearly 80 percent of all increases in GHG emissions between 1970 and 2010 (IPCC, 2015: 46). Agriculture is also a major contributor of GHGs, contributing about 25 percent of all CO2 emissions, 50 percent of all CH4_{emissions, and 75 percent of} all N2O emissions (FAO, 2011). GHGs that are not captured in natural “sinks”, such as soils, forests, waterbodies or ice, accumulate in the atmosphere and create a greenhouse effect that leads to global warming and climate change (IPCC, 2013, 2015).

Global warming and climate change poses a severe threat to the sustainability of modern human civilisation for several reasons. Increases in the frequency and intensity of storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves, as well as increasing water scarcity, food insecurity, ecological degradation, species extinction and sea-level rise, will all have major consequences not only for the global economy, but also for human survival (IPCC, 2015; New et al., 2011; OECD, 2012). Urban areas, where most people on the planet are said to now live (UNPD, 2015c), are especially vulnerable – not only due to higher temperatures within cities and larger concentrations of people, but also because many major cities have been built on the coast or in low-lying areas next to major rivers, making them particularly vulnerable to the threats of sea-level rise (Gasper, Blohm, & Ruth, 2011).

A global target has been set to limit average global warming to 2˚C above pre-industrial levels, in order to reduce the severity of these global environmental effects and to prevent various irreversible tipping points from being reached (IPCC, 2015). But if current global policies do not become far more ambitious soon, the 2˚C goal will likely be exceeded

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before 2050, and temperature increases up to 6˚C in the second half of the century could become a reality (OECD, 2012: 73).

To put these temperature increases into perspective: with a global-mean warming of 4˚C, scientists expect more than 40 percent of species on Earth to be threatened with extinction (IPCC, 2015); a 3 to 5˚C rise would likely result in the melting of both the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet (OECD, 2012: 87), which would raise sea-levels significantly; and a global-mean warming of 7°C is likely to create areas on Earth where metabolic heat dissipation would become impossible for humans, and thus leave such previously-inhabited areas uninhabitable (Sherwood & Huber, 2010).

 Food insecurity: Over the last 50 years the cultivated area on Earth has increased by around 12 percent, while agricultural output has nearly tripled (FAO, 2011: 3). Yet, today almost 800 million people on the planet are still undernourished (FAO, IFAD, & WFP, 2015: 8), and it has been estimated that around 70 percent more food will have to be produced globally by 2050 than there was in 2009 (FAO, 2011: 7). However, a more recent study suggested that 30 to 50 percent of all food produced on the planet is wasted (IME, 2013), so the challenge is not just to produce more food, but also for our global food system to drastically reduce waste.

The vast majority of the increased food demand will come from developing countries (FAO, 2011), where most of the world’s future population growth is expected to occur (UNPD, 2015a). However, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that the per capita agricultural land availability in low-income countries is less than half that of high-income countries, and that the suitability of their land for cropping is also lower (FAO, 2011). Also, over one third of the world’s soils are either degraded or under degraded land3, and valuable agricultural land is increasingly being lost to urban expansion (FAO, 2011; Angel, Parent, Civco, Blei, & Potere, 2011). These trends of increasing demand for food and decreasing supplies of arable land combines with the various threats of climate change4 to create the prospect of severe food insecurity and shortages in the 21st century.

 Water scarcity: Fresh water supplies are increasingly being threatened by continued industrialisation, urbanisation and population growth, and now also climate change (FAO,

3_{“Land degradation” looks further than just the soil to include the wider ecosystem (see FAO 2011: 108).} 4

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2011; UNESCO, 2015). Ever-increasing water use by agriculture, manufacturing and electricity generation are some of the biggest contributors to water scarcity (FAO, 2011; UNESCO, 2015). Groundwater sources, which are the sole source of drinking water for about 2.5 billion people on the planet, and which provides over 40 percent of global irrigation water (FAO, 2011), are also increasingly being diminished, with around 20 percent of the world’s aquifers estimated to be over-exploited – particularly around intensely farmed areas and megacities, as well as in arid regions such as the Arabian Peninsula (Gleeson, Wada, Bierkens, & Van Beek, 2012; UNESCO, 2015). Water security is also increasingly threatened by water pollution, which is mainly caused by mining, agriculture, industrial production and untreated urban runoff and wastewater (UNESCO, 2015). Even though our current water-situation is already unsustainable, global water demand from manufacturing, electricity production and domestic use alone is expected to increase by over 50 percent between 2000 and 2050 (OECD, 2012: 208). Adding to this future water demands from agriculture, global water demands in 2050 could easily be double that of the already high demand of today.

 Ecosystem degradation: In 2005 the UN released their Millennium Ecosystem

Assessment report, which was compiled by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries (UN, 2005).

The key finding of this global assessment was that over 60 percent of the ecosystem-services5 on which human civilisation depends for its survival are either degraded or being used unsustainably (UN, 2005). With the global population doubling from 3 billion people in 1960 to 6 billion people in 2000, the ecosystems responsible for these “services” to modern human civilisation have been pushed to or even beyond their capacity. As a result, we are now confronted by increasing problems of soil degradation, desertification, deforestation, over-grazing, habitat loss, ocean acidification, coral reef loss, over-fishing, eutrophication of waterways and “dead zones” where rivers connect to the sea (UN, 2005; WWF, 2014; UNESCO, 2015). This ecological degradation reduces the ability of ecosystems to regulate and restore themselves, and it increases the likelihood of sudden, nonlinear and irreversible changes, where entire ecosystems shift from one state into another state, with dire consequences for all who depend on them (UN, 2005; WWF, 2014; UNESCO, 2015). The main contributors to ecosystem degradation are population growth, industrialisation, urbanisation, agriculture and climate change (UN, 2005; Lewis & Maslin, 2015).

5 _{“Ecosystem services” are an anthropocentric term for natural functions performed by ecosystems, such}

as: air and water purification; pest and disease control; climate regulation; pollination; animal and plant production; ocean fishery production; nutrient cycling; carbon sequestration; erosion and flood prevention; and detoxification (UN, 2005; WWF, 2014).

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 Loss of biodiversity: Closely linked to ecosystem degradation is the threat of biodiversity loss. The persistent destruction of primary forests, which are some of the richest areas of biodiversity on land, as well as the increasing pollution of waterbodies and loss of coral reefs (the richest areas of biodiversity in the oceans), are having major impacts on the planet’s genetic diversity (UN, 2005; OECD, 2012; Rockström et al., 2013; WWF, 2014; Lewis & Maslin, 2015; UNESCO, 2015). Even though extinction can be seen as part of the natural long-term cycles of Earth, the current rate of species extinction is estimated to be up to 1,000 times what could be considered natural, leading some biologists to suggest that we might be facing the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event (Barnosky et al., 2011). Presently at risk of extinction are: 13 percent of all birds; 26 percent of mammals; 33 percent of reef-building corals; 41 percent of amphibians; and 63 percent of cycad plants (UN, 2015). A continuation or worsening of current extinction rates would further decrease the resilience and adaptability of ecosystems, and this would pose severe threats to the sustainability of our civilisation, since we are inextricably dependent on these ecosystems for our survival (UN, 2005).

 Over-consumption of raw materials: The global economy relies on the constant extraction of raw materials6 from the Earth’s lithosphere, which are processed via production activities before being consumed as finished products (Krausmann et al., 2009; Swilling & Annecke, 2012). Along this metabolic line of extraction, production and consumption, various wastes are created as by-products, which take the form of solid wastes (often ending up in landfills), liquid wastes (often ending up in freshwater bodies and the oceans) and gaseous wastes (such as GHGs – ending up in the atmosphere) (UNEP, 2011). It has been estimated that this global metabolism of raw materials have increased 8-fold between 1900 and 2005, with the steepest increases seen for the non-renewable abiotic categories (namely fossil fuels, construction minerals, industrial minerals and metal ores) (Krausmann et al., 2009). Even though technological advancements have greatly improved material resource efficiencies over the last century (Smil, 2014), continuous population growth has meant that annual global raw material consumption has increased almost every year – and particularly over the last 50 years (Behrens et al., 2007; Krausmann et al., 2009; UNEP, 2011; Schaffartzik et al., 2014).

With global population growth between now and 2050 expected to increase by about 2.5 billion people (UNPD, 2015a), the finite resources on which the global economy depends are destined to become increasingly depleted, and waste problems (such as CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion) are destined to become much worse, unless

6_{Raw materials can be grouped in the following material categories: biomass, fossil fuels, construction}

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consumption of raw materials is somehow significantly reduced. Under conditions of scarcity related problems such as higher resource prices, resource price volatility and increasing resource conflicts are also likely to get worse, which will further threaten our economic and social sustainability (Swilling & Annecke, 2012; UNEP, 2014).

This overview of the global polycrisis clearly illustrates that is a complex, systemic problem, and that it will require complex, systemic solutions to be overcome (Swilling & Annecke, 2012). Attempting to fix one component with little regard to how it influences the other components could worsen the polycrisis overall. For example, if issues of food security were tackled by simply producing more food in a business-as-usual manner – i.e. with resource- and chemical-intensive, mono-crop, industrial agriculture – then it will only worsen climate change, ecological degradation and water scarcity, and thereby also create a negative feedback loop, further threatening food security. A better approach in this example would be to reconfigure the global food system to eliminate waste, which could not only increase “production” by 30 to 50 percent7

(IME, 2013), but could do so without increasing resource inputs, GHG emissions, ecological degradation and water consumption – especially if more sustainable agricultural practices were followed alongside.

However, even if such systemic efficiency “solutions” were achieved, we would not be able to overcome the threats of the global polycrisis as long as population growth, industrialisation and urban expansion continues unabated – and as long as the world continues to rely on an economic model that is based on eternal growth. On a finite planet there are limits to growth, and even with significant gains in efficiency, critical planetary boundaries will eventually be crossed if growth continues unabated (Rockström et al., 2009, 2013), and this would inevitably lead to societal collapse (Diamond, 2005).

There are already signs that modern human civilisation has overstepped a critical mark. While life on Earth has gone through many periods of significant environmental change, modern homo

sapiens only started to thrive during the unusually stable conditions of the last 10,000 years or so

(Rockström et al., 2009: 472; Dawkins, 2005), which is known in geological terms as the

Holocene epoch (Lewis & Maslin, 2015). However, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the

global human population has increased exponentially – from around 1 billion people in the early 19th century to nearly 7.5 billion today (UNPD, 2015b) – and during this time humans increasingly became a primary driver of global environmental change (Zalasiewicz, Williams, Steffen, &

7_{It is estimated that 30 to 50 percent of all food produced on the planet is wasted (IME, 2013), so, if this}

waste can be eliminated, 30 to 50 percent more food will be available for consumption – without having to produce 30 to 50 percent more food.

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Crutzen, 2010). This human-induced change of the Earth’s biosphere8

has increased to such an extent, and has had such an overall biophysical impact, that geologists are currently discussing the creation of a new geological epoch, called the “Anthropocene” (Zalasiewicz et al., 2010; Lewis & Maslin, 2015). This is a clear indication that the unsustainable development of modern human civilisation is now threatening the very planetary conditions on which we have evolved to depend.

So, although the global polycrisis and its components are complex and systemic in nature, its message is quite simple: either find a pathway of sustainable development soon, or enter a period of collapse9. A number of previous civilisations (many of whom existed for far longer than our current civilisation) have collapsed due to human-induced environmental problems such as we are facing now (Diamond, 2005). Only, this time our environmental impacts and its related threats are on the global scale – and there is nowhere left for us to move. We only have one Earth. And our only way to avoid collapse is to reach a path of sustainable development soon.

1.1.2 The importance of “decoupling” for achieving sustainable development

Of all the components of the global polycrisis, the over-consumption of raw materials arguably plays the most fundamental role. The extraction of abiotic raw materials from the Earth’s lithosphere usually requires industrial-scale mining, and this not only causes large-scale ecosystem degradation, but also relies on substantial inputs of energy, water and chemicals, which results in GHG emissions and water pollution (UN, 2005; UNEP, 2011; FAO, 2011; UNESCO, 2015). The extraction of biomass (through farming, fishing and wood harvesting) also causes ecosystem destruction where done in an unsustainable manner – and this is mostly the case where farming, fishing and deforestation happens on an industrial scale (FAO, 2011; UN, 2005; UNEP, 2011; UNESCO, 2015). The production processes of both abiotic and biotic materials also rely on substantial inputs of energy, water and chemicals – which results in further GHG emissions, water pollution and land degradation – and, after the final products are consumed, the remaining materials are discarded back into the biosphere as waste, which often causes further environmental harms (UNEP, 2011). Furthermore, this global socio-metabolic process of extracting, processing and consuming materials, and excreting wastes, is occurring unequally throughout the world, with developed (or “industrialised”) countries consuming far more material resources than developing (or “industrialising”) countries, and they are also responsible for far more of its related environmental impacts (Krausmann et al., 2009; UNEP, 2011; UNESCO, 2015).

8 _{The Earth’s biosphere encompasses the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and all}

ecosystems – in other words, the “living zone” of earth.

9_{It must be noted that “collapse” does not mean total destruction or extinction. It is essentially the opposite}

of growth. In terms of the collapse of a civilisation, it refers to the collapse of the vital systems on which a society depends for its functioning – such as the existing food- or economic-system (Diamond, 2005).

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So, in terms of the global polycrisis, when we are talking about income inequality and poverty, we are ultimately talking about inequality in material consumption and a poverty of material resources; and when we are talking about climate change, food insecurity, water scarcity, ecological degradation and loss of biodiversity, we are ultimately talking about the unsustainable and ecologically harmful extraction and waste of material resources. Put another way, and following Goodland & Daly’s definition of sustainable development: we are extracting material resources at a faster rate than the biosphere’s capacity to renew them, and we are producing wastes at a faster rate than the biosphere’s capacity to absorb them (Goodland & Daly, 1996: 1002). This extraction, processing, consumption and waste of materials and their by-products – i.e. the global “social metabolism” (Weisz et al., 2001; Fischer-Kowalski & Haberl, 1997) – is thus at the heart of the global polycrisis. And unless we drastically reduce the material intensity of the global economy, we will not be able to achieve sustainable development.

For the sake of clarity: in the literature the terms “resources” and “materials” are sometimes used interchangeably, so Figure 1.1. illustrates the difference between “natural resources” and “materials” – with the latter being a sub-category of the former. Figure 1.1. also shows that materials can be further broken down into “abiotic materials” (fossil fuels, industrial minerals, construction minerals and metals ores), and “biotic materials” (or “biomass” – which is largely made up of agricultural-, fishery- and forestry-products). Abiotic materials are considered non-renewable10, and biotic materials are renewable (UNEP, 2011). “Raw materials” simply refers to unprocessed materials – i.e. the form they are in when they are extracted (UNEP, 2011).

Figure 1.1: Illustrating the difference between natural resources and materials

Source: Based on UNEP (2011).

10

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In order to deal with the goal of drastically reducing the material intensity of the global economy, the concept of “decoupling” was introduced by the International Resources Panel of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 2011). Figure 1.2 illustrates the decoupling concept. As can be seen in this figure, where global material extraction was closely linked to GDP for most of the 20th century, increasing as GDP increased, the link between global material extraction and GDP “decoupled” around the 1970s – meaning that the global economy became less material-intensive, requiring fewer raw materials to produce one unit of GDP than it did before (UNEP, 2011). This decoupling has been largely due to various efficiency gains, while the continuous increase of material extraction has been largely due to continuous population growth (Krausmann et al., 2009). In order to reach a path of sustainable development, however, an absolute reduction of annual global material extraction (and of its related environmental impacts) would be necessary, since the illustrated “relative decoupling”11 still leads to annual increases in overall global material consumption (UNEP, 2011).

Figure 1.2: Global metabolic rate 1900-2005 related to global GDP

Source: UNEP (2011) and Krausmann et al. (2009).

1.1.3 The import role of urban areas for achieving absolute decoupling

Urban areas play a central role in the various components of the global polycrisis, and therefore also play a central role in our quest for sustainable development through decoupling. As highlighted earlier, a significant portion of the world’s poor lives in urban slums, constituting around 30 percent of the total global urban population – and the total number of people living in urban slums are increasing. At the same time, even though only about 50 percent of the current

11_{“Relative decoupling” refers to material consumption increasing at a slowing rate relative to GDP, while}

“absolute decoupling” refers to the absolute amount of material consumption going down while GDP increases (UNEP, 2011).

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global population are estimated to live in urban areas (UNPD, 2015c), around 80 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) is produced here, and around 70 to 75 percent of global energy and materials are consumed here (OECD/IEA, 2008; Hodson, Marvin, Robinson, & Swilling, 2012; Royal Dutch Shell, 2012; UNEP, 2013). So urban areas are both breeding grounds for income inequality and poverty, and the places where the vast majority of GDP is produced and materials and energy are consumed. Furthermore, and also in terms of the global polycrisis, urban expansion plays a central role in the loss of agricultural land, groundwater depletion, increasing water pollution and ecosystem destruction, which makes urban growth one of the main drivers of food insecurity, water scarcity and ecosystem degradation. And, because urban areas are where most materials and energy are consumed, they are also key drivers of climate change.

So, with the UN projecting that the global urban population will increase by around 2.5 billion people by 2050 (UNPD, 2015c) – which practically constitutes all of their projected world population growth to 2050 (UNPD, 2015a) – it becomes critically important that we achieve absolute decoupling at the urban level if we have any hope of achieving it globally. Because, as was illustrated by the overview of the global polycrisis earlier, our current situation (at current levels of world and urban populations) is already unsustainable. With all the technological advancement and efficiency gains that we have made over the last century, we have still only achieved relative decoupling; our overall consumption of materials and energy has continued to increase, even though at a slower pace to GDP. Population growth, and particularly urban population growth, has been largely responsible for this continued growth in global material and energy consumption, because urban areas are where the vast majority of materials and energy are consumed. Therefore, if our goal of absolute decoupling on the global level was to be achieved, it would be imperative to achieve urban-level decoupling first (UNEP, 2013) – especially considering the projected world and urban population growth to 2050. If we fail, material and energy consumption will continue to increase alongside world and urban population growth, and so will their related environmental and social impacts, and a path of sustainable development will not be reached.

As the director general of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, Maurice Strong, put it:

“The battle to ensure our planet remains a hospitable and sustainable home for the human species will be won or lost in the major urban areas” (Girardet, 2004: 3).

Urban areas are therefore not only key contributors to the global polycrisis, but also hold the key to a pathway of sustainable development. And it is increasingly being recognised that in both cases it is the same key, namely: urban infrastructure (Hodson et al., 2012; Ramaswami et al., 2012; Bulkeley, Broto, & Maassen, 2013; Muller et al., 2013; UNEP, 2013). Urban infrastructures

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not only embody materials and energy in their physical stocks, but they also conduct the flows of materials and energy through urban areas (Hodson et al., 2012; Muller et al., 2013; UNEP, 2013). The design of infrastructure systems for energy, transport, sewage, water, telecommunications, etc., and for buildings, ultimately determines the quantity of materials and energy required for the urban fabric (i.e. the stocks). It also determines the amount of material and energy flows that are conducted through these urban landscapes – and wasted (UNEP, 2013).

The way in which urban infrastructures and buildings have been designed, built and operated until now has essentially been under a set of technical modalities and governance routines that assumes a limitless supply of resources and limitless absorptive capacities of the environmental sinks into which they excrete their wastes (Hodson et al., 2012: 790; UNEP, 2013). In other words, urban infrastructures and buildings have not been designed and built with sustainability in mind, and as a result their wasteful designs are a root cause of our urban and global unsustainability. So, in order to achieve absolute decoupling at the urban-level, it is now increasingly being recognised that it would be necessary to reconfigure the world’s urban infrastructures to drastically reduce their material and energy intensity (Hodson et al., 2012; UNEP, 2013).

But, with around 2.5 billion people projected to join the global urban population by 2050, it would not only be necessary to reconfigure existing urban infrastructure, it would also be crucial to not build new urban infrastructure in a business-as-usual manner. This is because urban infrastructure typically lasts between 25 and 75 years, so infrastructure and buildings built today will create a “lock in” effect to 2050 and beyond, dictating urban material and energy flows for decades to come, and preventing their cities and towns from becoming sustainable (UNEP, 2013). Also, the materials and energy embodied in the physical infrastructure and buildings themselves are also of concern – especially with regards to the CO2 emissions that would be emitted in the production of the urban fabric required for future urban expansion – if these are constructed in a business-as-usual manner (Muller et al., 2013; Angel et al., 2011).

So, ultimately: the extent to which we manage to overcome the global polycrisis, achieve decoupling and reach a path of sustainable development will largely be determined by the extent to which we can achieve urban-level decoupling through redesigning our urban infrastructures. And, critically, the extent to which future urban development incorporate these new designs. Because if future urban growth continues in a business-as-usual manner, using conventional designs and approaches to building urban infrastructures, then such levels of material and energy intensity will combine with future urban population growth and urbanisation to worsen the global polycrisis, and keep us locked-in on a path of unsustainable development.

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1.2 Motivation for research

This background of the global polycrisis and our unsustainable urban systems, which largely drives it, was the theoretical source of my research topic. After first releasing a report on the need for decoupling in general (UNEP, 2011), and then focusing on the importance of urban-level decoupling (UNEP, 2013), my supervisor and his colleagues on UNEP’s International Resource Panel set their sights on assessing the resource requirements of future urbanisation. Their rationale was that the “second urbanisation wave”, which is projected to add around 2.5 billion people to the global urban population by 2050, is likely to pose severe challenges to our goal of reaching a path of sustainable development if our business-as-usual approach to designing and building our urban areas is followed. However, nearly everyone in the urbanisation literature seems to assume that this future urbanisation will happen, and that somehow the resources will be found to build, maintain and operate our future urban settlements. Nobody is asking “what are the resource requirements of future urbanisation?”. So, a team was brought together to start considering this question, and I was fortunate enough to have been invited to their first meeting, which took place in Rotterdam in October of 2014.

The original intention was that I would form part of the eventual project to ascertain the resource requirements of future urbanisation, and that elements of this project would then feed into my thesis. I was drawn to the topic because of my education in sustainable development at the Sustainability Institute at Stellenbosch University, which allowed me to make the connections I made in the background section earlier. I am also of the view that it is important to ultimately judge sustainable development from the global perspective. This is because, even though the devil is in the detail, and reaching a path of sustainable development will require that sustainability solutions are found for nearly every product, process and system, these sustainability “solutions” (whether “sustainable cities” or “sustainable energy systems”, “sustainable agriculture”, etc.) will mean little if we do not overcome all the components of the global polycrisis and reach a path of sustainable development on the global level – and in time. For example, even if 100 cities achieved “zero” carbon emissions, they would not be sustainable unless global carbon emissions come down, because they do not exist in a bubble, and global climate change will still affect them directly. So, both in terms of the background of the original research problem, and in terms of the global perspective taken, the research topic appealed to me, and the critical importance of the research was clear to me.

1.3 Obstacles, and refinement of research problem

Unfortunately the project did not work out as planned, and after a few unforeseen setbacks it was decided to lengthen its schedule. As a result of these developments I found myself in a “change-of-plan” situation about halfway through my thesis period, and I had no other choice but to find my own way of ascertaining the resource requirements of future urbanisation. However, this brought

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the benefit of taking a more critical look at the underlying data and assumptions of such a study – particularly with regards to the UN’s urbanisation projections – and this is what my supervisor advised me to do. He also suggested that I take a look at fertility rates and population projections, since these largely underpin future urbanisation projections. So, my focus then expanded slightly to also ask “are these future urbanisation projections likely to materialise?”

As a result of these changes I shifted my literature focus from only resource consumption and urban metabolism literature to include a deeper focus on the urbanisation literature, as well as literature on fertility rates and population projections, while at the same time reviewing potential methods and models for determining the resource requirements of future urbanisation. This process continued for at least two more months, during which time I finally gave up on finding an existing model to help me calculate the resource requirements of future urbanisation – because none of the models were suitable. I therefore decided to find my own way of doing the calculations, and collected all the data that seemed relevant for me to do so. This included three key sets of data, namely data on urbanisation, population growth and resource consumption. Most of this data was for the country level, since standardised urban-level data is still hard to come by.

However, alongside my struggle do find a way of calculating the resource requirements of future urbanisation, and collecting and analysing the data I felt were necessary to do this, my deeper analysis of the literature continued. And this literature analysis revealed more and more obstacles, which kept forcing me to change my current idea of how to approach the study, and start over again. This process continued until I reached a point where I realised – about two months before my due date! – that the problem was not in the way I was using the data, but with the data itself. I effectively reached a dead-end with my analysis of all three key sets of data, which was due to fundamental problems that underpin these datasets themselves. And in doing so I made it impossible for myself to continue with the study by just taking these datasets at face value. So, my supervisor then suggested that I take a step back, and instead of trying to calculate the resource requirements of future urbanisation, I should rather critically analyse the foundations on which such a study would be built. This meant not only that the focus of my study changed again, but also that the structure of the thesis shifted from including a data analysis, to becoming three interlinked literature analyses, and a proposal of a way forward.

1.4 Research problem and objectives

In light of the global polycrisis and the key role played by urban areas, it must be asked what the resource and sustainability implications of the projected urban growth to 2050 will be. Nobody in the urbanisation literature has tried to tackle this critical question. Scholars such as Orr (1999), Heinberg (2006, 2007, 2011) and Moriarty & Honnery (2015) have considered the limits of future

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urbanisation, and offered various reasons for why people might start moving back to rural areas one day – which includes considerations of future resource constraints – but these are mainly theoretical assumptions. None of them attempted to actually calculate the resource requirements of future urbanisation. So, this is the problem that still looms over this study: we do not know what the resource requirements of future urbanisation are, and we need to know this if we are to design and build urban infrastructures and buildings today which will not lock us into a path of unsustainable development.

However, after my in-depth analysis of the relevant literature, I established that this research problem could not be addressed if the three key types of data which would underpin such a study were taken at face value, because there are fundamental problems with these datasets themselves. A pre-requisite for a study to assess the resource requirements of future urbanisation would therefore be a study to assess the way in which to do so – with a particular focus on the validity of the most critical data sources. So, the objectives of this study are now to:

 assess the validity of the available data on global urbanisation;  assess the validity of the available data on global population;

 assess the validity of the available data on global urban resource consumption; and  propose the best way to assess the resource requirements of future urbanisation.

1.5 Research methodology

In the end, the research methodology for this research product was quite simple. All other approaches and considerations that were taken along the way, and types of data that were collected, are now irrelevant. The final research product, as it is laid out in this thesis, consists of three literature analyses and a proposal derived from my reading and reflections. In the few places where data are analysed, explanations are offered there for how it was done. There was no clear, linear process that was followed for the various literature analyses – it was very much an organic process that evolved as new information came along, and as external factors changed – so an attempt will not be made to explain the sequence of the process.

My investigation of the literature revolved around the three main themes: urbanisation, world population projections and urban resource consumption. However, the focus was not just on the actual data of these themes, but also on the theories underpinning the data, and on the theories based on the data. In my search for literature I always first looked for peer-reviewed journal articles through my university’s library, and then looked for reports or books from reputable sources – using both the university library and the internet. Where sufficient academic material

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could not be found, or where developments were too recent to have resulted in published studies, reputable newspapers and websites were searched.

The only data that was found on global urbanisation was that of the UN, published biennially as their World Urbanisation Prospects, which is essentially the dataset that underpins the mainstream narrative on global urbanisation. So, for the analysis of the urbanisation data, no comparisons were made with other urbanisation estimates and projections, and the approach centred around questioning the UN’s data. For the analysis of world population projections, the UN’s world population projections (which underpin their urbanisation projections) were weighed up against two other sets of world population projections that were found in the literature. So, the analysis of the world population projections was more substantial. Recent developments that were included in the analysis of world population were sourced from reputable newspapers, since these developments are likely to only show up in academic studies and policy reports in the next year or two. The vast majority of my literature investigation revolved around resource consumption, and particularly urban resource consumption, since this was the body of literature I originally planned on tapping into, and it is also the literature containing the largest variety of sources. My focus here was on the urban metabolism (UM) field, particularly on the individual UM studies that have been done, and on the methods and concepts that they use, but the broader resource consumption literature within which UM is embodied was also often consulted.

As mentioned earlier, once the three main bodies of literature were analysed and conclusions were drawn, I found myself in a dead-end with all three, and there was no clear path forward. So, I withdrew from the literature and my laptop to give myself the necessary space and “slowness” to reflect on this complex problem – as suggested by the late complexity philosopher, Paul Cilliers (P. Cilliers, 2006). The process of this reflection, and the questions and insights that arose from it, are detailed in Chapter 5, which contains my proposal for assessing global urban resource use.

1.6 Outline remainder of thesis and core arguments

Chapter 2 will lay out the analysis of the urbanisation literature. The core argument that will be made here is that the inaccuracies, inconsistencies and uncertainties that are imbedded within the urbanisation estimates and projections of the UN are of such a nature that their data must be considered too unrealistic and unreliable to form the basis of a study on global urbanisation.

Chapter 3 will lay out the analysis of the world population literature. The core argument that will be made here is that, in the coming decades, economic factors look set to both impede the decline of Africa’s high fertility rates and drive an increase in the fertility rates of low-fertility countries; and, furthermore, if this materialises, the combined effect would be a much higher global population by 2050 than any world population perspectives currently projects.

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Chapter 4 will lay out the analysis of the urban resource consumption literature. The core argument that will be made here is that the domestic material consumption (DMC) indicator that is used in material flows analysis (MFA) studies of cities and countries, does not provide a realistic picture of a city or country’s resource consumption, because it does not account for the upstream raw materials that were required to enable the consumption at the final destination.

Chapter 5 will then consider an alternative approach for assessing global urban resource consumption, which includes a re-definition of urbanisation from a socio-metabolic perspective. These proposals will be based on the theory of socio-metabolic regimes.

Chapter 6 ends with a brief discussion and conclusions. The significance of the study will be emphasised here, which stretches to all fields who rely on urbanisation, population and resource consumption data. Recommendations for future studies will also be made.

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CHAPTER 2 Analysing urbanisation data

2.1 Introduction

One of the key sets of data needed to conduct an assessment of the resource requirements of future urbanisation is urbanisation estimates and projections. Urbanisation estimates would be required to determine the historic and current per capita resource consumption of urban areas (by combining it with resource consumption data), and urbanisation projections would be required to create trajectories for per capita urban resource consumption into the future. These estimates and projections of urbanisation are provided by the UN in their biennial World Urbanisation

Prospects (WUP) reports (UNPD, 2015c). However, instead of taking the UN’s urbanisation

estimates and projections at face value, a decision was made to first check the foundations of their data. This involved an analysis of the latest WUP report itself, as well as of the wider literature on urbanisation – including critiques of the UN’s estimates and projections. It is this analysis of the urbanisation literature that will be the topic of this chapter.

A number of issues were uncovered in the analysis of the mainstream narrative on urbanisation. Issues of semantics were identified in the literature with regards to the terms “city” and “urbanisation”, and the way in which their misuse can lead to confusion is discussed. But the most significant critique of the mainstream narrative (and the UN’s data that underpins it) comes from scholars who study urbanisation in Africa, and these critiques make up the majority of this chapter. Questions are asked over the contribution of rural-urban migration to urbanisation in Africa, the pace of urbanisation in the region, the accuracy of the UN’s estimates and the reliability of the census data on which they are based. These are all highly relevant critiques, since the UN expects around 90 percent of urban growth to 2050 to be contributed by Africa and Asia (UNPD, 2015c). So, what happens in Africa has significant implications for the global urbanisation picture. The chapter ends by investigating another key issue with urbanisation estimates and projections, namely the variety of definitions for what constitutes and “urban settlement”. This is found to be a proverbial “joker in the pack”, and the profound implications of this urban demarcation problem is discussed.

A critical assessment of key datasets and approaches with which to determine the resource requirements of future urbanisation

approaches with which to determine the resource

requirements of future urbanisation

Declaration

Abstract

Opsomming

Acknowledgements

Table of contents

List of figures

List of tables

List of acronyms and abbreviations

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1

Background

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1.2

Motivation for research

1.3

Obstacles, and refinement of research problem

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1.4

Research problem and objectives

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1.5

Research methodology

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1.6

Outline remainder of thesis and core arguments

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CHAPTER 2

Analysing urbanisation data

2.1

Introduction